


Summer's End

by istia



Category: The Trap (1966)
Genre: F/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:21:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eve in a reflective moment at the start of her second winter in the north.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer's End

Shadow eclipsed the sun, leaching warmth from the bare skin of her hands and face. She opened her eyes and tilted her head to stare up at the haloed bulk looming over her like a beast of the dark forest, seeming twice her height and three times her bulk; the only other human being within two days' distance. He'd paid the earnings of three entire years' trapping and hunting for her, and dragged her at the end of a rope, betrayed and alone, to this remote place. He'd drunk himself into heated desires till the rum ran out, and raged and cursed at her, but she'd kept him at bay all that first, harsh winter with a brand from the fire, or sometimes the ax, but mostly only a small knife that wouldn't slow a wolf for more than a heartbeat.

"Woman," he growled, deep and low as a grizzly's rumble, "you sit doing nothing while Jean La Bete does all the work? Old Man Winter will laugh as he eats you when you have no wood for a fire and no food for your belly."

He flung a pile of bloody pelts at her feet. A clawed iron trap among them clanked against the frozen ground.

He'd made her learn to shoot, to protect herself after Yellow Dog and No Name's attack; but she'd fired the rifle to save him from the wolves. He'd ordered her to bring help from the Indians and she'd walked for a day and a night and another day through the snow until her legs barely held her, only to find the village deserted, the round, underground homes and a lone body rimed with white; then made the long trip back to the cabin, stumbling with exhaustion. He'd ignored her terror when she'd returned to the stink of rot, telling her she must cut off his bitten leg--weak and helpless with fever, but raging still and merciless in his insistence she do this terrible thing; and she'd wielded the ax and burnt his flesh because he didn't want to die.

But she'd gone to his bed in the spring only when she chose to put aside her little knife. And when she'd left him, survived the punishing, solitary journey down the river and finally, precariously, reached safety and a man who demanded nothing of her, nothing at all but to love her earnestly and patiently for all their lives: she'd chosen again.

She stood and stretched to her full height, still entirely engulfed in his shadow. She thought, smiling, of a fern growing at the foot of a mossy red cedar.

She went up on tiptoes in her thick, hide boots to kiss his cold-reddened cheek. His beard scratched against her chin as she drew in his scent of blood and hard sweat and clean, cold air. His hand encircled her wrist, a bracelet of large fingers her arm could move up and down within. She slipped out of his grasp and turned her wrist to slide their palms together, feeling the rough hardness of his hand fall pliant in her grip.

He growled again, deep in his throat, mute as herself. His arms caught her in a circle, fierce and tender with the warmth of a thousand suns, and fleeting as summer. Before he pulled away, she caught his hand again to squeeze it, and his teeth flashed white against his black beard.

Across the river, a loon's cry echoed through the trees in a long, still note.

"Go, little rabbit." His push against her shoulder was like the flip of a minnow's tail against her hand. "Jean La Bete wants his dinner."

He bent over, leg solidly planted, and swept up his pelts and the trap. The trap's worn metal parts clinked together as he straightened, its weight swinging from his hand, and he took a couple of stuttery steps to get his balance as his wooden leg skidded on the slick ground.

"We will eat well tonight." He turned the pelts to show her a brace of hares nestled small among them, their soft brown fur clean of blood, necks broken straightaway by the nooses he set.

She took them with a quick smile, running a hand over the fur she'd make into a new pair of gloves for the winter. He watched her for a moment before turning and limping toward the side of the cabin, his deep voice raised in familiar song as natural as the loon calling.

 _When I'm a man, I'll take me a wife,  
We'll live in a house on the hill, the hill,  
With a carriage and horses all white, all white._

His voice followed her inside like the pulse of her blood and she smiled as she built up the fire. Tonight they'd eat tender stew under the chandelier carved in summer's loneliness from the heart of a pine tree.

 _And she'll have diamond and pearls, and pearls;  
And she will have diamond and pearls._


End file.
